Holy cow! Who shall I hug next?

Luckily for cow-huggers, a beef curry doesn’t tell you whether it came from a cow or a buffalo, and so anyone eating beef is fair game. Representation pic

Today is apparently Cowlentine's Day, the day sincere Hindus were urged to express their deep love for cows by, erm, hugging them.

Not easy to hug a large beast. Hugging is "the act of squeezing (someone) tightly in one's arms, typically to express affection". Example: "He hugged the Holstein close". Thing is, you need to get your arms all the way around your loved one before you can deliver that tight hug.

What if the loved one has horns? What if the hugger got skewered by the huggee?

The Animal Welfare Board of India, guardian angel of all living beasts in the country, and advisor to the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying, didn't think this should be a dealbreaker. "It is known as ‘Kamdhenu' and ‘Gaumata' because of its nourishing nature like mother, the giver of all, providing riches to humanity," they said in an awed press release, which was later withdrawn. "Hugging with cow [sic] will bring emotional richness, hence will increase our individual and collective happiness."

Even if it has horns? And what about informed consent? Is one allowed to have non-platonic feelings towards a nourishing mother?

Yes, I realise I'm not the first person to be sarcastic about Hug-a-Cow Day. But perhaps I'm only the second after B R Ambedkar to ask: What is it about Hindus and cows?

Also Read: The loss of our markers

Let's first deal with the "giver of all, providing riches to humanity".

The cow doesn't give anybody anything. We take what we want from cows, when and how we wish, and the cow has no say in the matter. We feed them, fatten them, take away the milk they produce for their calves and feed it to our children. It's not the cow that is benevolent, it's the human being that is greedy.

When she becomes too old and unproductive, she becomes a burden. The cows are then let loose on the city streets, to forage in garbage dumps, eat plastics, grow skinny and die. The law no longer lets them be slaughtered.

Some cattle-owners quietly herd them to a real cow-loving country.

A few years ago, workshopping in Jeypurhat, a border town in Bangladesh, I learnt that our border security soldiers take an extended tea break every evening. For about 45 minutes, a section of the India-Bangladesh border remains unpatrolled. During this period, several thousand ageing Indian cows quietly cross over into Bangladesh, a country that relishes beef and makes lovely leather products.

To facilitate this, Indian law has kept definitions usefully flexible. Only native Indian cows apparently meet the exacting standards of Hindu purity and therefore need protection. There is nothing divine about the rest, including buffaloes, Holsteins, Jerseys and cross-breeds. No need to hug them.

Cow slaughter is still only legal in Kerala, West Bengal and a few northeastern states, but in some others, beef from buffaloes is not illegal. Each of the remaining states makes up its own rules, some banning buffalo slaughter and some penalising consumption. Suspicion is enough to convict; no proof required. It's easy to get put away for life, especially if you have a certain kind of beard.

Luckily for cow-huggers, a beef curry doesn't tell you whether it came from a cow or a buffalo, and so anyone eating beef is fair game, especially if they also happen to worship at a mosque.

This is why Mohammed Akhlaq, 52, was lynched and killed in Dadri in 2015, based on rumours that he had been storing beef. Later, the court concluded it might equally have been mutton, who can tell with cooked meat?

Banning cow slaughter but doing it sloppily creates confusion - the perfect pretext for going after Muslims. However, with your permission, let me shed some inconvenient light on the matter.

In 2022, India was second only to Brazil in beef exports, logging 18.5 lakh metric tonnes.

Some will argue that it was buffalo beef but slaughtering any bovines is illegal in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Haryana and Delhi.

Mumbai and Delhi, which lead in Indian beef exports, both fall under blanket slaughter bans.

There's more. Though the companies have Muslim-sounding names, here are the names of their owners - Satish Sabharwal (al Kabeer), Sunil Kapoor (Arabian Exports), Sunil Sood (al Noor Exports) and O P Arora (AOB Exports).

Say hello to India's top beef exporters, all Hindus. All cow-huggers.

For next year's Valentine's Day, I am pleased to propose a new candidate for hugging: the chicken. Our fine feathered friend is truly divine. Its cock-a-doodle-doo wakes us up in the morning, after which its eggs give us a hearty breakfast. Their glorious droppings contain phosphates which fertilise our fields. When they get old, they gladly let us make butter chicken and kebabs with their succulent flesh.

Best of all, they don't burp or fart methane, like cows do, and thus have a zero carbon footprint.

I nominate February 14, 2024 as Murgentine Day. Everyone is invited to hug a chicken.

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com

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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper